Racial Tensions Flare Anew in a Texas Town

JASPER, Tex. — For more than 100 years, a rickety iron fence separated the black graves from the white ones at a cemetery in this East Texas town. Months after the brutal murder here of James Byrd Jr., a black man chained to a pickup truck and dragged to death by three white men on June 7, 1998, the fence was torn down by residents as a sign of unity and reconciliation.

Fourteen years later, Jasper City Cemetery remains segregated: blacks, including Mr. Byrd, are buried near the bottom of the hill, while whites are buried at the top.

“It’s our custom, here in the South, here in Jasper,” said Albert K. Snell, 80, a retired teacher who is white and a member of the cemetery’s board of directors. “We have the same cemetery, but we don’t mix the white and the black graves. They’re separate. Put a black up here? No, no, we wouldn’t do that. That would be against our custom, against our way of doing things.”

In recent months, the perpetual, uncomfortable truce between the races in this piney woods town of 7,600 has ruptured, and the feuding has become increasingly public.

Well, maybe I’m not as big a *RACIST* as some loons on the left are accusing me of being. Once I am DEAD, I don’t give a damn WHAT they do with my carcass.

Bury it, cremate it, dump it in the ocean and call it a *burial at sea*, leave it out in the desert, critters gotta eat too, but being buried next to, or among BLACK folks, just isn’t a big concern for me.

I don’t really care one way or the other, they are HIS words and beliefs, not mine, but HIS words make me wonder, where does Albert K. Snell get his sheets laundered? Yes, THOSE sheets!

You just have to know, there is ALWAYS a lot more to these stories than meets the eye;

At the center of the controversy this time is not a vicious crime, but a bitterly fought political feud over the hiring and firing of Jasper’s first black police chief, Rodney Pearson. Mr. Pearson says he is preparing to sue. The Texas N.A.A.C.P. has asked the federal government to investigate. And former and current white officers who worked under Mr. Pearson have filed federal complaints of their own alleging racial discrimination.

The battle dates from last year, when the majority-black, five-member City Council voted to appoint Mr. Pearson, first as the interim and then the permanent chief.

Mr. Pearson had been a longtime state trooper in the area and was a former Jasper volunteer fire chief. But Mr. Pearson’s selection was opposed by a number of white residents, who believed the council passed over more qualified candidates, including Gerald Hall, a white police captain at the time and a veteran of the department.

The NAACP can ask for all the investigations they want, all they are going to get is an investigation from the Obama administrations Department of IN-Justice.

This is Jasper, Texas folks. Racism has run rampant in Jasper for more years than I am old, it’s rooted deep into the fabric of that part of Texas and NO investigation is going to change it or make it go away. If it’s not WHITES espousing racism towards BLACKS, it will be BLACKS espousing racism against WHITES. It’s that simple.

A group calling itself the League of Concerned Citizens circulated petitions to recall three of the four black council members who voted to hire Mr. Pearson, accusing them of “incompetence, misconduct and malfeasance in office.” Hundreds of people signed the petitions, and it appeared that all of them were white, according to a ruling in a lawsuit filed in connection with the recall effort.

Two of the council members were recalled in November. When the new City Council was elected in May, it became a 4-to-1 white majority. This month, one of the council’s first acts was to vote, 4 to 1, to fire Mr. Pearson at a public meeting after council members and Mayor Mike Lout, who is white, questioned him about his handling of the department. Alton Scott, the black councilman, opposed the move.

Wait for it … wait for it … wait … wait…..

“The whole thing is racist,” Mr. Scott said of Mr. Pearson’s firing. “It’s based on race. It has nothing to do with qualifications.”

There it is: THE RACE CARD! You knew it was coming didn’t you? Well, there’s MORE.

White residents opposed to Mr. Pearson said their concerns had never been about race, but about his failure in his employment application to disclose bad checks he had written, including one that led to a 1990 misdemeanor arrest. They said Mr. Pearson and his supporters had unfairly labeled criticism of him as racist, and that Jasper — 45 percent white and 44 percent black, according to the 2010 census — had had a long history of black leadership, including R. C. Horn, the mayor at the time of Mr. Byrd’s murder.

As with criticism of Barack Hussein Obama, any time a WHITE persons criticizes a BLACK person, it has nothing to do with FACTS, FIGURES or ACTIONS, the criticism is only made because the WHITE person is a RACIST!

It doesn’t matter what the action, deed or words were that drew the criticism, the criticism is only leveled because the person is BLACK.

Three white council members — Mitch McMillon, Randy Sayers and Raymond Hopson — said their votes to fire Mr. Pearson stemmed from what they saw as his lackluster performance as police chief, and that firing him had nothing to do with race, though Mr. McMillon said he believed the decision to hire him did.

“The chief of police needs to be someone of impeccable character, to demand the respect of his employees and officers and really the town,” said Mr. McMillon, who runs a senior center in town and who won a seat vacated by a recalled black council member. “Mr. Pearson didn’t have that. The decision to hire Rodney was based solely on the color of his skin. That was a racially motivated decision. And I think our town reacted appropriately. They were recalled as a result of that.”

“The chief of police needs to be someone of impeccable character, to demand the respect of his employees and officers and really the town,”, and that is the truth of the matter, but because a thought to be *less than desirable* Police Chief, or Council members, just happened to be Black, OH. MY. GOD., it was racist to say so.

In one way, the dispute over Mr. Pearson’s hiring was a small-town political power struggle. Mayor Lout wanted Mr. Hall, the police captain, to be named police chief, but the majority-black council rejected the mayor’s recommendation and selected Mr. Pearson. When Mr. Pearson became chief, he demoted Mr. Hall to sergeant and brought in a new captain, angering the mayor.

By now you’re probably wonder just WHAT any of this has to do with the cemetery, I know I am.

Well, the story actually gets around to mentioning the cemetery a bit further down the page, you can read it if you like, but I found what I believe to be the crux of the matter concerning Rodney Pearson, and the reason he is REALLY opposed by the people of Jasper, Texas.

Yes dear readers, this “photo” says a lot to me,,,,but has nothing to do with basic qualifications to be a police officer, much less the Chief.

Any Misdemeanor on your record, including passing a bad check 22 years ago(1980), will dis-qualify you. Period.

No police academy will take you with a record!

Sorry, go find another line of work.

Also, something stinks here as it says Rodney Pearson had been a “long time State Trooper” in the area. NO Texas State Trooper will keep his job with a misdemeanor. Maybe this is why Rodney Pearson wasn’t a Texas State Trooper anymore.

Cemeteries in Texas are on hills if there are any around.

There has always been a “negro” cemetery in most Texas cities and rural towns.
Nothing new here.

Just about all of them are run down and in a state of dis-repair. Takes money folks, to keep them up and beautiful.

Today, the race relations down around the towns Northeast of Houston, TX., is very low, due to the recent rape of an 11 year-old girl who was gang-raped for a full day by at least 26 black men! Yes, true.

Even a Nationally televised show about it.

Also, in the same area, a 31 year old black woman shot and killed a white woman, and stole her newly born baby out of her dying arms, for her own. She was caught hours later in Houston, and the white baby returned to the white father!!

But the stigma of these actions is known by every white man and woman in this area of Texas!!

So, leave the citizens of Jasper, Texas alone. It is their town as long as no civil right laws are violated. They can hire and fire anyone, black or white,,, as long as want,,,as long as the laws of the land are not broken.

Well–I can bet that the folks in that town will be getting a lecture and more from the DOJ–if they can be objective that is, which I doubt that the “with”Holder DOJ can do anything right. What a sad state of affairs in 2012–I should hope we could have gotten past all that by this time in history.

Skin color is irrelevant. What is relevant in job performance and demeanor in society

I think what really makes the citzens of Jasper go ape on both sides is the fact that Rodney Pearson is married to a white woman. That irritates the racists on both sides of the aisle. For the Black racists, he left their plantation and becaIme a “house n!gg@r” oreo. For the White racists, his wife became a “trailer trash wh[]®e” who needs to be burned at the stake as far as they’re concerned.

I just hope the race hustlers appear so vile in the eyes of thir children, to the point they put a stop to it.

Mr. Snail needs to stop crawling around the pig pen in his Toga Party Uniform.

Blacks demanding opportunity is much like muslims demanding respect. These are not things that can not be demanded, but must be earned. Just because a position opens up within a govt agency, does not mean that a black must be placed in that position. As should always be the standard…the best person for the job.

I completely agree, to deny a person an opportunity based on the color of their skin is racist. Well, what if a person is not denied, but instead, given an opportunity based on the color of their skin. Is this too not racist. After all, both decisions were made based solely on the person’s skin color. Therefore, both decisions would be racist and be wrong.

However, thanks in large part to affirmative action, blacks are now demanding they be given opportunities based solely on the fact that they are black. As if somehow white guilt should trump qualifications. That somehow, because of something that happened a long time ago to black people that are no longer alive by white people, that too are no longer alive, should cause rational people today to just hand out opportunity to those with darker skin, as a way of saying sorry for what happened. As if somehow, black people are owed something.

First, I do not believe that any man is owed anything. It must be earned. However, if certain people do feel that there is a debt owed, when can it be considered repaid? Surely the nearly 650,000 dead and wounded American Union Soldier who fought during the Civil War paid a bulk of the debt…no?! A majority of these white men paid the ultimate price in order to say SORRY to the black man for what happened. I guess it was still not enough. I guess more detriment for the white man is still needed before black people say that enough has been done and all if forgiven. Talk about who is holding a grudge.

What I find peculiar is that what blacks are demanding is racism…only it is racism for their benefit, so it’s perfectly okay. Just because some people feel really bad about history does not mean we should act irrational today. It is irrational to not pick the best man for the job, espcecially when that job is serving all men, black and white. To allow white guilt to intervene with what should be the easy decision of picking the best man for the job is ridiculous. After all, to choose the person less qualified, deprives all of us whom that person is to serve.

I can not help but feel if given the choice between having a white person who will serve ALL people equally versus a black man who will give preferential treatment to blacks only, who it is black people will want to see elected. obama as president has shown us what choice blacks will make…and it is sad.

Affirmative action and other such similar programs do nothing other than to infuriate white people who see the unfairness of these programs. These programs do nothing other than to prolong racism and racist attitudes. When white people see true equality and fairness being squashed and blacks unfairly gaining opportunty not deserved, it is just plaing in-your-face insulting. This harbors a distaste and possibly a hatred of those that benefit from this unfair system. Racism may hopefully one day be a thing of the past, but it will certainly never go away as long as affirmative action and similar attitudes are allowed to exist.

What I find really distasteful about affirmative action is it is govt’s way of saying blacks are not good enough on their own to gain these opportunities and therefore, must be given special treatment. And black people, by accepting these benefits of affirmative action are essentially agreeing.

Affirmative action, like unions, had a place and time where they were needed. However, their time has come and gone and now, their existence represents nothing but abuse of power. Their existence does nothing now but exacerbate the situation. These things must be done away with if true progress is to me made.

Affirmative action and other like attitudes will never allow racism to die. Those that push affirmative action benefit greatly by its existence. These people have gained great wealth and power by allowing racism to exist. Therefore, they work very hard to make sure that racism remains alive and well so that they may continue gaining benefits. They use all of their power and influence to make sure that tensions between blacks and whites remain high. If racism did not exist, they would lose everything.

As stated above, if a man is denied because of his skin color, it is racist. So too if a man is given something due to the color of his skin, it is racist. By their actions, black people are essentially saying racism is perfectly okay, as long as it is a benefit for them or a detriment for white people.

This attitude is still racism, with the only difference being who stands to benefit. Trading the benefactor of racism from white people to black people does not solve the problem. Racism still exists. And as long as situations like the one discussed in this article occur, racism will never go away and in fact, it will only harbor more resentment and hatred.

The solution to this problem was given to us almost fifty years ago, by a black man who had a dream, yet will still have chosen to not listen. Even those that proclaim him to be a great and wise man, will still ignore his words of wisdom as long as they will continue to benefit from the broken system we have in place. This great man’s words contain the solution and it is quite simple to follow.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr. – “I Have a Dream” speech, August 28, 1963

Judging a man by the color of his skin, be it to his detriment or benefit, is still racism, and we will never resolve this issue as long as we allow it to happen.

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I'm a highly opinionated and very Conservative blogger. If you ask for my opinion, I'll let you know exactly what's on my mind. I don't play the PC game, so be very careful what you ask for, you might get a lot more than you expect.